


In the Queen's Service

by LilTheHunger



Category: Books of the Raksura - Martha Wells, Cloud Roads - Martha Wells
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-13
Updated: 2011-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilTheHunger/pseuds/LilTheHunger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River is, and will always be, Pearl's most loyal warrior.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Queen's Service

River was only a gangling youth when word spread through the colony that Pearl's last royal clutch had been stillborn.

It meant nothing to him.  Many of the Arbora, it was said, had also suffered dead or sickly clutches in the past turn; Indigo Cloud sang the mourning songs more often than anything else, it seemed.  But the mourning was not real to him, not quite.  When he'd first heard, he'd tried to imagine his own siblings, Branch and the rest, dead and still.  But then Branch had pounced on him and Drift, ever the follower, had called a game of chase, and the joy of play, the sheer aliveness of his fellows, made their deaths impossible to imagine.  Until Pearl led the court in song.

And when he heard the deep, sonorous song of the queen thread throughout the rest of the voices -- Pearl's last song, though the court would not realize it for some while -- he wanted to understand.  He needed to know what could cause such beauty, and such pain.

So he stole up to the queens' level, as quietly as he dared.  It helped that there were no queens, other than Jade and Pearl herself -- and with the queen in mourning, Jade was busy trying to reassure the rest of the court that her mother was all right.  River crawled along the ceiling toward the source of that slow, aching song.

He spied her consort first, tall lean Rain, still and silent on one of the balconies.  Rain stood in groundling form, bathed in his namesake as an evening shower sent warm slanting sheets across the colony's platforms.  His head hung low, long hair a wet curtain obscuring his face; his shoulders slumped as he leaned against the railing.  River could not remember hearing Rain's voice in the eveningsong.

Pearl stood beside him with her wings hanging limp, her face tilted to the sky as she sang.  River could see only her back.  Unwilling to interrupt such an obviously private moment, River looked around -- and then spied Pearl's enormous bower-bed, where three tiny forms lay curled and still amid the cushions.

He caught his breath, having never seen newborns before.  They were so small!  One was a miniature version of his clutchmate Branch, brown and bristly, clutching tail in hands.  Another was silver, with the faintest tracery of gold over her scales and little frills:  a queen small enough to fit in River's cupped hands.  The third lay facedown, head turned to the side, little black wings obscuring his face.

They looked asleep.  But as River stared at them, realizing first that there were only three instead of the five there should have been, and then that their sides were not flexing as they breathed, and lastly that there was no scent of health to them, no scent of _baby_ , only _death_ \-- then, at last, he understood.

He dropped to the floor, and knelt beside the bed in groundling form, and wept.

Someone touched his shoulder eventually.  Startled out of his misery, River looked up to see Rain leaning over him.  The consort's face was streaked with water, slack with weariness.  But he said, "The queen spoke to you."

And River looked up in sudden unease to see Pearl standing before him.

He had seen her before, but never up close.  She was beautiful, as all queens were, and intimidating, as all queens were -- but at the sight of her face, all River's fear faded.  He could not fear someone who held such pain in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he blurted.  He had no idea what she'd said to him.  They were just the first words that came to his mind.  "I wish I could make them better."

Pearl gazed at him for a long moment.  "So do I."

A long, taut silence fell.  After a moment, Pearl stepped forward.  She bent over the bower bed, her movements slow, deliberate.  A moment later, she straightened with three small bundles, each wrapped tightly in a blanket, in her arms.  Then, to River's shock, she moved around the bed, crouched, and handed the bundles to River.  He fumbled to hold them all, then remembered what they were.  That made it easier.  He had held children before.  He shifted and cupped his wings 'round his arms to help hold them.  To keep them safe.

Pearl nodded once, in approval.  "Take them to Flower," she said.  "She'll know what to do."

"Yes, Pearl," said River, rising with great care.  But she stopped him with a look.

"Your name," she said.  He told them.

"Thank you, River," said Rain.  Pearl nodded agreement.  She looked at the bundles in River's arms for a long moment, her hands flexing as if she wanted to take them back.  Then she turned away.

The last words he heard, as he left the queens' level, were in her voice:  "Thank you, River."

***

Rain died ten turns later, coughing his own lungs to pieces.  Silver, a fledgling consort from Pearl's last surviving clutch, beat his father into death by only a few hours, thanks to the same sickness.  The court sang again, and River sang with them.  He had liked Rain, who had been gentle and quiet and encouraging.  The court seemed most upset about the fact that there were now no young consorts; no one for Jade, no one for Pearl when she recovered from grief.  River just hated that Rain was gone.

He did not seek out Pearl this time.  He was older, wiser, more aware of his lowly status within the Aeriat as one of the younger warriors, and a male at that.  But he was in the habit of going flying in the evenings before bed; it helped him relax.  (So did sex, with Drift or occasionally with Balm, but he could not count on that.)  When he landed near the river, intending to wash and perhaps hunt a light snack, he did not at first sense the presence of anyone else.  Then it occurred to him that the still dark form on a rock nearby was not just a trick of the shadows.

"Stay here," said a voice, when he started and would have crouched to flee.  Pearl.

Surprised, chagrined, River straightened.  It had been a month since Rain's death.  Pearl had taken to vanishing in the evenings; no one knew where she went.  No one but him, now.  "I didn't mean to disturb you," he said, and meant it.

"If you were disturbing me," Pearl said, with only a hint of her usual dryness, "I'd tell you.  Come here."

So River went to her, a bit shyly.  She sat on the rock, her knees drawn up and tail curled neatly around her, in her winged form since they were on the ground.  She shifted aside one of her wings and patted the rock beside her.  "Sit down."

River did this, keeping what he thought of as a respectful distance.  Pearl sighed and cupped her wing around him, hauling him against her side so as to make it clear where she wanted him.  Her wing pinned him there.  River fought back the instinct to resist.  It was pointless anyhow; he was just a warrior, and she was a queen.  But as he sat there, growing warm within the curve of her wing and body, he found himself relaxing.  He did not mean to put his head on her shoulder, would have assumed such a gesture was far too familiar -- but he grew sleepy, and his head sagged, and before he knew it, it was there.  And he would have lifted his head, pulled away -- but Pearl let out a heavy, weary sigh, and he belatedly realized that she was taking some comfort from him.

It made him feel good, to know he could do that for her.

***

He went back to the river every night thereafter to let her hold him.  She did not order it.  It was simply something she needed, that he could provide.  Even if she had asked, it would never have occurred to him to say no.

A few weeks after they had begun the night meetings, Pearl stood, gathering him up, and carried him over to a patch of soft grass.  River did not understand, at first, as she undressed him.  Sex among the warriors was a quieter thing, an asking and not a taking.  He had heard rumors that it was different with queens -- and it was.  She did not hurt him, but she was not gentle, either.  He did not resist.

The next day, as he wandered through the warriors' level dazed and not quite aware of his surroundings, Vine took a hard look at him, then pulled him aside.

"This won't last," he told River.  "Understand that.  You can't give her children.  You give her no status with other queens, or even with Jade.  She'll go looking for another consort someday, and you'll be an afterthought.  Don't fall in love."

The words angered him, made him speak rashly.  "She doesn't need a consort right now," he snapped.  "And I don't need your advice."

Had he not still been half out of his head, he would have added more words to make Vine understand.  He'd meant to say, _The last thing she wants right now are more children to make her feel helpless and vulnerable_ , and maybe he would've followed that up with _And I don't need to be a consort to make her feel good_. 

(Pride would not have allowed him to also say, _I know she won't want me forever. You don't have to tell me._ Vine knew that already anyway.)

Instead he stopped speaking, and Vine's expression hardened.  He stood to his full height -- a head taller than River -- and for a moment River was afraid.  But then a muscle flexed in Vine's jaw.  "Fine," he said, and his tail lashed once. "Pick a new bower, then -- one of those."  He gestured above at the upper-level bowers that the higher-status warriors were permitted to claim.  "You'll need a bed big enough for her, if she decides to take you down here."  He paused.  "Enjoy it while you can.  When she's done with you, you'll be lucky to get a spot on the floor somewhere."

With that, he strode off.  River knew at once he had made a mistake, perhaps a huge one.  Vine had a lot of influence among the warriors.  The ones who favored Jade would reject him already now that he was Pearl's, but Vine's anger meant that he would have few allies among Pearl's warriors, too.  They would all resent him for his fortune, hate him for his arrogance -- whether he was arrogant or not.  Whether Pearl's interest was really a blessing, or not.  They would never believe otherwise.

Nothing left to do but play it to the hilt, then.

He moved his belongings into the bigger bower, and lay awake in it that night, worrying and feeling out of place  in the new chamber's vastness.  But then Pearl came to him, not taking him this time, just curling 'round him for sleep, and in her arms River forgot all his troubles.

It didn't matter that he wasn't a consort, he decided.  If all the others hated him, thought him a fool, he didn't care.  He would make himself however strong he needed to be to endure his queen's favor.  He would fight however hard he had to fight to keep that favor, and to give her what comfort he could while she allowed.

 _I will love her for as long as I can_.  And he would be grateful for every moment that she accepted his love.

For what else could a warrior do?

**Author's Note:**

> Neither Pearl nor River are my favorite characters... but I can't help wondering why each of them are the way they are. I think Jade hit it on the nose re Pearl; all the losses she's suffered have taken their toll. But River was a harder sell for me until I realized his relationship with Pearl is doomed. I mean, okay, he's a dick. But if I was in love with someone, and everyone around me constantly told me I wasn't good enough for her because of *biology*, I might be a dick too.


End file.
